by Knar Gavin

and it was in the river

in the near-drowning river
I felt my small dark
animal swell

felt the black urchin dark
middle meat of body betrayal
sucking all stomach as each
rib rejoiced that p
ending pop out to be
so spine sprung

the river would have
scatte red me run my
bones across its sandy flo
or had me live blind
that wet desert and
itstorming Death, you did that
once near-have me had we
given to scattering
what a clamor a water

insisting orchestras
my femur playing the length of
your spine our skulls
sluice to Onward
every orbital singing

A Sighting

And, says the one I've buried, my dear palm of berries,
who's dripping now? She buries, he buries, everywhere these we berries.
I know. I'm practically all fist. If you call my skin milk,
either cursing or the recitation of names. Absence has a name, too.
All those other I'd have berried but thought better of.

.

I wanted to follow that day. Your low buzzing steed.
Some creep. Weirdo. Yea, Thom, I know. Elegant once because young
and crazy is flatiron-to-the-face hot. Other and crazy buries noses in glasses
and veers eyes to the side. Like a flock of old nun breast to the face could kill a man.

 I still want to follow you.
 I'm still in this business. Resurrection.

After the Harvest

The family dog, Cacophony makes her rounds
body strung with dinner bells. A slow spider
turns forth and fro in the guitar's sound hole
weaving the measure of a particular silence.

With evening, the silent slaw of a wilting kitchen
yields its full pot of late luck and remnant mash.
The field hands hurry, waving, in. Eat what's been
boiled. Through winter, the tubers stiffen without me.

Your heart is no woodland of mine.
I go in to shoot the squirrels
and not a single tree burns.